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Section 4: Challenges
In a previous section, I delved into two ways in which citizen journalism makes significant contributions to mainstream media’s news production process. Highlighting the ways in which professional and citizen journalists can collaborate is important to improve journalism. However, we have to be aware of the challenges that the partnership of these two kinds of journalism pose. We need to start thinking about approaches that help mainstream media maintain a productive and positive relationship with citizen journalists. The first idea is how mainstream media can encourage citizen participation in the news production process, and the second is how the use of user generated content impacts mainstream media’s credibility. Getting people to participate '' In the new media landscape, audience engagement has become an important factor in assessing a news story’s success. Because advancing communication technologies have made it easier for people to get involved with the news, having members of the audience collaborate in the news production and actively comment on the stories is increasingly valued by mainstream media. Thus, audience-related positions have grown in newsrooms to encourage audience participation. This practice not only speaks to journalists and editors’ awareness about the importance of audience participation. It also speaks to the efforts news staffs have made to engage in to get their audience to actually get involved in news production and commenting. A recent study by the Pew Research Center found that residents of three U.S. cities —Denver, CO., Macon, GA, and Sioux City, IA — were more likely to share news than to post or submit their own material. These results resonate with a national survey — also carried out by the Pew Research Center in 2011 — that found that 50% of social network users in the U.S. share or repost stories, images and videos, while 46% commented on stories. 14% of those surveyed said they posted photos they took from a news event, and 12% posted videos. While these numbers are not shocking, they do show the state of citizen journalism in the U.S. If we consider citizen journalism to be a practice in which average citizens collect, report and distribute content about news events, then the portion of the audience engaging in some kind of citizen journalism is as small as 14%. The seemly low number of citizen collaborators might be misleading. Even though just 14% of the audience is providing original content — this of course changes from country to country and it also depends on the type of news citizens cover — information overload remains and it still affects the quality of journalism. The issue here is not about the quantity of material any given newsroom receives. We have to pay attention to the ''quality of (1) the information citizens provide, and (2) the relationship we, as journalists, develop with the contributors. Molly de Aguiar, director of The Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation media grants program, emphasizes the focus professional journalists should put on the quality of their relationship with the audience by saying that journalism “should be relevant, inclusive and participatory.” In her post Declaration of Dependence, de Aguiar suggests that reporters should get involved with the communities they serve, and pay (genuine) attention to people’s contributions to foster the relationships that ultimately encourage audience engagement. What specific practices can mainstream media develop in order to increase audience engagement? What strategies can the media adopt in social media to improve their relationship with citizen journalists? Please, share your ideas in the comments section below. You can also provide links to news sites you consider to be doing a good job in facilitating and encouraging audience participation.